1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disk drive, and more particularly, to an optical pickup guiding structure for guiding an optical pickup for reading and writing signals from and to an optical disk.
2. Description of the Prior Art
FIG. 1 is a plan view showing a general optical disk drive. As shown in the figure, a pickup base 1 installed on a main chassis (not shown) is mounted with a spindle motor 2 for rotating a disk D, and the spindle motor 2 is mounted with a turntable 3 on which the disk D is seated.
An optical pickup 5 for writing a signal to a signal recording surface of the disk D or reading the recorded signal from the disk is supported on a pair of guide shafts 6 and 6′, which are installed on the pickup base 1 to be parallel with each other, so that the optical pickup 5 is movable in the radial direction of the disk D. The optical pickup 5 is mounted with a feed guide 7 at a side thereof. The feed guide 7 is guided along a lead screw 9, which is rotated by means of a sled motor 8 installed on the pickup base 1, so that the optical pickup 5 can be moved along the pickup guide shafts 6 and 6′.
However, the aforementioned prior art has the following problems.
In the prior art, both ends of the optical pickup 5 are movably supported using the guide shafts 6 and 6′ supported on the pickup base 1. Since the respective guide shafts 6 and 6′ are separately manufactured and installed on the pickup base 1, there are problems in that the total number of parts of the optical disk drive is increased and an assembly process thereof is complicated.
Particularly, as the number of parts of the optical disk drive according to the prior art is relatively large, the defect rates due to the assembly tolerance are increased. There are also problems in that the installation state of the guide shafts 6 and 6′ is changed by an external force during use, and thus, the operational reliability thereof is deteriorated.